Nissan Goes Racing In A Leaf Electric Car

A lot of people who like racing and high-performance street cars are familiar with Nissan Motor Co.’s Nismo motorsport division. But did you ever expect to see the name plastered on a Leaf electric car?

Well, it’s here. The car maker unveiled the Leaf Nismo RC at the New York International Auto Show. And while its carbon-fiber body has a huge rear wing, two doors instead of four, and is lower, sleeker and frankly, better looking than the production version, there’s no doubt it is a Leaf. Indeed its drive system is pretty much the same as what you’d find in the street version.

The “RC” stands for racing competition, and Nissan says this hopped-up version of the Leaf electric car is built for the track. The company says it wants to use racing as a way to bring attention to what it considers the “untapped potential” of electric vehicles.

Carlos Tavares, chairman of Nissan Americas, said the electric racer “will serve as a rolling laboratory for the accelerated development of EV and aerodynamic systems, as well as a platform for the development of new green motorsports series.”

The company says it will probably demonstrate the car at motorsports venues this year. Nissan is also looking into starting a zero-emission racing series. The racing Leaf is powered by a lithium-ion battery and electric motor that generate 107 horsepower and can be charged to 80% of full capacity in 30 minutes. So pit stops could be longer than the 10 seconds or so to which Formula 1 and Nascar fans have become accustomed.

But don’t laugh too heartily. Electric power already has a presence in racing. Porsche has been competing in endurance racing with a gasoline-electric hybrid version of its 911 Carrera GT3 since last year and is developing an even faster hybrid called the 918 GT. Other racing teams have also experimented with hybrid power in the last several years.

Battery power also has a long history in the auto industry. In the early days of motorized personal transport electric cars were well-established (as were steam-engine cars) and gasoline seemed sketchy. It took a long time to develop a widespread system for collecting, refining and distributing the liquid fuel.

Comments (5 of 22)

Did you wonder if there was an effort out to control the electric car industry. Well, let's name the names:
The Solyndra case proves that the DOE LOAN and ATVM funding was based on pure bribery and lobby manipulation. All of the failure points on Solyndra have been visible for ages so they would not have gotten the money if "real due diligence" had been performed instead of giving the money away to hard-wired campaign contributors. Kleiner Perkins put Chu in office as Secratary in order to get favored nations funding for their portfolio companies and keep competitors to those portfolio companies from getting funded. Steve Westly and Kholsa helped them along with Raj Gupta.

The Detroit News writes that Detroit & Telsa recipients used the money to pay bonuses to staff and other uses, have parties and other uses not intended for the funds. How the *H* did a Japanese company get U.S. taxpayer dollars from the DOE?

The DOE ATVM And Loan Gaurantee programs were conducted by criminals in order to commit crimes. The "Car Czar" Steve Rattner (Now a proven criminal by the State of NY), Lachland Seward, Matt Rogers and his partner Steve Spinner and most of Tesla’s friends at McKinsey Consulting from Silicon Valley (Who used Tax payer jets to fly back and forth to Silicon Valley to go bike riding), Steve Westley and a group who now left DOE, and some who are still there are criminals. They stole your tax money and put in in their friends pockets. Federal investigations have already shown that Detroit embezzeled and misspent the first monies distributed. Every company that has so far gotten money has misspent it, did not have what they said they had at the time they applied, were tied to campaign contributions and rated lowest on the comparison reviews. If you google: "Unprofessional behavior plagues SRS" to read about the death threats, you can see the depths to which some of these people will sink. See the recent mass exodus from DOE of key staff in the last 9 months: They took the money and ran.

The few applicants that did get money spent tens of millions of dollars on bribes and lobby “incentives” equal in ratio to the money they got. Now the White House says that $17B of the taxpayer money that Detroit got is a write-off and is lost forever. In other words Detroit has already embezzeled more money than all of the other applicants applied for put together.

Google Tesla’s Siry on “DOE stifles innovation” to read what one of the highest level staff at one of the car companies said.

The GAO, a federal crime busting agency, just released public reports saying that the DOE Loan programs were corrupt. All of the people under Seward were “connected” or “made men” in the Detroit cadre. Seward changed the section 136 first-come-first serve rule (Which appears to be illegal) in order to provide advantages to his friends in Detroit who didnt bother to apply in time and to cut out the smaller players who were already ahead in the application proces

Subpeonas of Detroit and DOE Loan Departments will prove crime, corruption, favoritism and rigged contracts were the rule and not the exception. BTW: Revenge of the Electric car is a paid product placement film. It is not a real documentary.

3:18 pm April 23, 2011

Bill wrote :

"Other racing teams have also experimented with hybrid power in the last several years." LOL. You mean "other" as in Formula 1, the pinnacle of the auto racing world? Yes, they're using hybrids, the electric portion of which they call "kinetic energy recovery systems" (KERS).

2:31 pm April 22, 2011

Lance wrote :

Electric racing would be easy if inductive chargers were placed in the track. No fuel stops required. The size of the motor could be increased because the amount of power would not be limited to the capability of the batteries.

2:23 am April 22, 2011

Grace wrote :

Nissan really beat GM/ and America to the EV punch. In the same way Nissan Zs revolutionized affordable sportscars.

@Jonathan Welsh. I think you are a supporter of EVs. Thanks for posting this, but you might want to read this critique (of mine) for the sake of future posting. bit.ly/LEAF-Facebook-Gaucherie. Your post unwittingly led to a less-than-optimal portrayal of the vehicle which also made its way to Facebook.